Saucy Postcards: The Bamforth Collection

Taken from Saucy
Postcards: The Bamforth Collection, a new book which celebrates the
golden age of comic postcards. The Yorkshire-based publisher Bamforth &
Co started producing ‘saucy’ postcards in 1910, and at the peak of their
popularity 20 million were in circulation per year. The cheeky designs
became synonymous with the English seaside resorts where they were sold, but
were also exported all over the world.

After World War Two, Bamforth artists began to satirise the classic comic
archetypes that still resonate today – henpecked husbands, naughty nurses
and over-sexed milkmen.

In this comprehensive showcase, a selection of more than 250 cards originally
published from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s are reproduced in full
colour for a nostalgic walk through Britain’s social history. As battles
with the postcard censorship committees resulted in almost 150 prosecutions
over the years, the postcards also raise interesting questions of censorship
laws in addition to being a unique look at changing British humour. As
George Orwell said of them in 1941: “Obscene... [but] the corner of the
human heart they speak for might easily manifest itself in worse forms, and
I for one should be sorry to see them vanish.”

To order a copy of Saucy Postcards: The Bamforth Collection by Marcus Hearn
(Constable & Robinson) for £11.99 (+£1.35 p&p), call
Telegraph Books on 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk